1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a recording medium feeding device for feeding a recording medium in a recording device such as a printer and to a recording device equipped with the same. Further, the present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus.
Herein, the liquid ejecting apparatus in not limited to a recording device such as a printer, a copier, a facsimile, or the like in which an ink jet type recording head is used and for performing recording on a recording medium by ejecting ink from the recording head, and used to include an apparatus which eject a liquid corresponding to the application instead of ink from a liquid ejecting head corresponding to the ink jet type recording head on an medium to be recorded corresponding to the recording medium to adhere the liquid on the medium to be recorded.
As the liquid ejecting head, besides the recording head, there are included a color material ejecting head used for manufacture of a color filter such as a liquid crystal display, an electrode material (conductive paste) ejecting head used for manufacture of an electrode such as an organic EL display or field emission display (FED), a bioorganic material ejecting head used for manufacture of a biochip, a sample ejecting head as a minute pipette, and the like.
2. Related Art
A feeding device in which a recording paper as an example of a recording medium or a medium to be ejected can be set in a laminated state and for taking out and feeding the topmost one among the set recording papers one by one is provided in a recording device or a liquid ejecting apparatus represented by a facsimile or a printer.
Separating means for separating the topmost recording paper which should be fed from the following recording paper is provided in the feeding device so that the following recoding paper is not fed together when the topmost recording paper is taken out. There are various configurations as such separating means. As an example, there are included the one in which a recording paper is nipped between a rotating roller and a friction pad, the one in which a recording paper is nipped between a rotating roller and a retard roller to which a predetermined rotation torque is applied by a torque limiter mechanism, and the like. An example thereof is described in Patent Document 1 (JP-A-2004-331300).
By the way, transport means for precisely sending a recording paper is provided at the upstream side of recording means for recording on a recording paper, and detecting means for detecting the passage of the front end or the back end of a recording paper is often provided at the vicinity of the upstream side of the transport means. The detecting means is required to determine a recording starting position with respect to a recording paper and is preferable to be provided at a place as close as the recoding means in order to enhance the accuracy of the recording starting position. Further, by providing the detecting means at the place near the recording means in this manner, there is no need for providing the detecting means for every feeding device when a plurality of feeding devices are provided, and it is also advantageous in cost.
Consequently, when the next recording paper is fed subsequently to the recording paper previously fed, it is preferable that the feeding operation of the next recording paper from a paper feeding cassette is started when the passage of the back end of the preceding recording paper is detected by the above detecting means so that the back end of the recording paper previously fed is not overlapped with the front end of the next recording paper. Further, in the configuration in which the separating means is provided at the downstream side of the paper feeding cassette, in order to surly performing separation of recording papers, it is required that the separating means is switched to the state where the recording paper can be nipped at the period when the front end of the recording paper fed from the paper feeding cassette is passed through the separating means.
However, if the preparation operation of the separating means (switching operation from the state for not nipping recording paper to the state for nipping) is started when the passage of the back end of the preceding paper is detected by the detecting means, it is required to start the feeding operation of a recording paper after waiting a time required for the preparation operation. This prevents high throughput performance.